VOGONS


First post, by AppleSauce

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So I've been trying to run two 12mb voodoo 2s in sli , and I tried playing quake 3 with them and it seems to be working , but for some reason it thinks I only have 8mb of texture memory.

I'm using the mismatched drivers for 2 different brand cards , anyone know what could be going on?

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Reply 2 of 12, by AppleSauce

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Byrd wrote on 2022-04-25, 06:28:

That's right for dual SLI 12MB cards - 4MB frame buffer memory + 8MB texture memory, SLI detected

For some people it shows 8 and 16 though , which is why I'm kinda confused.

Reply 3 of 12, by bloodem

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Byrd wrote on 2022-04-25, 06:28:

That's right for dual SLI 12MB cards - 4MB frame buffer memory + 8MB texture memory, SLI detected

Uhm... it's not. With two 12 MB cards in SLI, there should be 16 MB of total texture memory and 8 MB of frame buffer memory (which adds up to 24 MB).

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1 x PLCC-68 / 2 x PGA132 / 5 x Skt 3 / 9 x Skt 7 / 12 x SS7 / 1 x Skt 8 / 14 x Slot 1 / 5 x Slot A
5 x Skt 370 / 8 x Skt A / 2 x Skt 478 / 2 x Skt 754 / 3 x Skt 939 / 7 x LGA775 / 1 x LGA1155
Current PC: Ryzen 7 5800X3D
Backup PC: Core i7 7700k

Reply 4 of 12, by rasz_pl

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bloodem wrote on 2022-04-25, 06:34:

Uhm... it's not. With two 12 MB cards in SLI, there should be 16 MB of total texture memory and 8 MB of frame buffer memory (which adds up to 24 MB).

Is that with official or modded driver? because those numbers are basically a scam.

Open Source AT&T Globalyst/NCR/FIC 486-GAC-2 proprietary Cache Module reproduction

Reply 5 of 12, by bloodem

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rasz_pl wrote on 2022-04-25, 07:10:

Is that with official or modded driver? because those numbers are basically a scam.

That's with official drivers (though, as far as I remember, I saw the same numbers with the FastVoodoo drivers).
Why do you say it's a scam? I mean, the whole reason why 1024 x 768 works in SLI is because of the increased frame buffer memory. And since each card only renders half the lines, the texture memory is also effectively doubled.

Edit: on second thought, it's very possible that this is a visual glitch with the FastVoodoo drivers, while the official drivers show the correct numbers.

To the OP: as long as the benchmark results are good (and 1024 x 768 works as expected even in games that use Z-Buffering), you should disregard what that properties page says. 😀

1 x PLCC-68 / 2 x PGA132 / 5 x Skt 3 / 9 x Skt 7 / 12 x SS7 / 1 x Skt 8 / 14 x Slot 1 / 5 x Slot A
5 x Skt 370 / 8 x Skt A / 2 x Skt 478 / 2 x Skt 754 / 3 x Skt 939 / 7 x LGA775 / 1 x LGA1155
Current PC: Ryzen 7 5800X3D
Backup PC: Core i7 7700k

Reply 6 of 12, by havli

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8MB of framebuffer memory is correct. 16 MB of texture isn't. Effectively, there is only 4 MB of texture memory.

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Reply 7 of 12, by Gmlb256

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4MB per TMU precisely and SLI won't actually improve the situation with texture thrashing.

VIA C3 Nehemiah 1.2A @ 1.46 GHz | ASUS P2-99 | 256 MB PC133 SDRAM | GeForce3 Ti 200 64 MB | Voodoo2 12 MB | SBLive! | AWE64 | SBPro2 | GUS

Reply 8 of 12, by rasz_pl

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bloodem wrote on 2022-04-25, 07:46:

Why do you say it's a scam? I mean, the whole reason why 1024 x 768 works in SLI is because of the increased frame buffer memory.

Local framebuffer usage decreases from 800x600x2 to 1024x384x2, you could see this as doubling framebuffer, but:

bloodem wrote on 2022-04-25, 07:46:

And since each card only renders half the lines, the texture memory is also effectively doubled.

Both cards must load same textures. In effect you can see this as either double texture memory with textures loaded twice, or no texture memory doubling.

bloodem wrote on 2022-04-25, 07:46:

Edit: on second thought, it's very possible that this is a visual glitch with the FastVoodoo drivers, while the official drivers show the correct numbers.

This "glitch" unsurprisingly smells like someones idea for driver tuning.

Open Source AT&T Globalyst/NCR/FIC 486-GAC-2 proprietary Cache Module reproduction

Reply 9 of 12, by AppleSauce

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bloodem wrote on 2022-04-25, 07:46:
That's with official drivers (though, as far as I remember, I saw the same numbers with the FastVoodoo drivers). Why do you say […]
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rasz_pl wrote on 2022-04-25, 07:10:

Is that with official or modded driver? because those numbers are basically a scam.

That's with official drivers (though, as far as I remember, I saw the same numbers with the FastVoodoo drivers).
Why do you say it's a scam? I mean, the whole reason why 1024 x 768 works in SLI is because of the increased frame buffer memory. And since each card only renders half the lines, the texture memory is also effectively doubled.

Edit: on second thought, it's very possible that this is a visual glitch with the FastVoodoo drivers, while the official drivers show the correct numbers.

To the OP: as long as the benchmark results are good (and 1024 x 768 works as expected even in games that use Z-Buffering), you should disregard what that properties page says. 😀

So what would be a good game to test with , would quake 3 do the job?

Reply 10 of 12, by TrashPanda

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AppleSauce wrote on 2022-04-26, 03:28:
bloodem wrote on 2022-04-25, 07:46:
That's with official drivers (though, as far as I remember, I saw the same numbers with the FastVoodoo drivers). Why do you say […]
Show full quote
rasz_pl wrote on 2022-04-25, 07:10:

Is that with official or modded driver? because those numbers are basically a scam.

That's with official drivers (though, as far as I remember, I saw the same numbers with the FastVoodoo drivers).
Why do you say it's a scam? I mean, the whole reason why 1024 x 768 works in SLI is because of the increased frame buffer memory. And since each card only renders half the lines, the texture memory is also effectively doubled.

Edit: on second thought, it's very possible that this is a visual glitch with the FastVoodoo drivers, while the official drivers show the correct numbers.

To the OP: as long as the benchmark results are good (and 1024 x 768 works as expected even in games that use Z-Buffering), you should disregard what that properties page says. 😀

So what would be a good game to test with , would quake 3 do the job?

Unreal/Unreal Tournament 99 both have native Glide SLI support and will use it if its present and working.

Reply 11 of 12, by bloodem

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rasz_pl wrote on 2022-04-26, 00:37:
Local framebuffer usage decreases from 800x600x2 to 1024x384x2, you could see this as doubling framebuffer, but: […]
Show full quote
bloodem wrote on 2022-04-25, 07:46:

Why do you say it's a scam? I mean, the whole reason why 1024 x 768 works in SLI is because of the increased frame buffer memory.

Local framebuffer usage decreases from 800x600x2 to 1024x384x2, you could see this as doubling framebuffer, but:

bloodem wrote on 2022-04-25, 07:46:

And since each card only renders half the lines, the texture memory is also effectively doubled.

Both cards must load same textures. In effect you can see this as either double texture memory with textures loaded twice, or no texture memory doubling.

bloodem wrote on 2022-04-25, 07:46:

Edit: on second thought, it's very possible that this is a visual glitch with the FastVoodoo drivers, while the official drivers show the correct numbers.

This "glitch" unsurprisingly smells like someones idea for driver tuning.

True, those are all very valid points. 😀

AppleSauce wrote on 2022-04-26, 03:28:

So what would be a good game to test with , would quake 3 do the job?

Here are a few benchmarks I did on a Pentium 3 Coppermine @ 868 MHz / FSB 124 MHz, with 2 x Creative Voodoo 2 12 MB running in SLI:

GLQuake Voodoo 2 SLI: 640 x 480 x 16: 183.5 FPS
GLQuake Voodoo 2 SLI: 1024 x 768 x 16: 82.2 FPS
Quake 2 Voodoo 2 SLI: 640 x 480 x 16: 144.1 FPS
Quake 2 Voodoo 2 SLI: 1024 x 768 x 16: 68.8 FPS
Quake 3 Voodoo 2 SLI: 640 x 480 x 16: 72.8 FPS
Quake 3 Voodoo 2 SLI: 1024 x 768 x 16: 37.3 FPS

You can compare these to your own results. Even with much slower CPUs you should see similar numbers.

1 x PLCC-68 / 2 x PGA132 / 5 x Skt 3 / 9 x Skt 7 / 12 x SS7 / 1 x Skt 8 / 14 x Slot 1 / 5 x Slot A
5 x Skt 370 / 8 x Skt A / 2 x Skt 478 / 2 x Skt 754 / 3 x Skt 939 / 7 x LGA775 / 1 x LGA1155
Current PC: Ryzen 7 5800X3D
Backup PC: Core i7 7700k

Reply 12 of 12, by AppleSauce

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I just tested unreal and it ran in 1024x786 fine so I guess the display setting just displays wrong info for some reason?

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